Biden's Philly Rally Flub: 'John Fetterman Vetoes—' and a Claim He Cut the Debt 'in Half' (November 5, 2022)

President Joe Biden tripped over his own script at a raucous Philadelphia rally three days before the 2022 midterms. “But John Fetterman vetoes—” he told the crowd, before catching himself: “but, with your votes, John Fetterman will be in the Senate.” In the same speech he claimed Democrats had “literally cut the Federal debt in half.”

The video above shows the flub at Temple University’s Liacouras Center on Saturday, Nov. 5, 2022, where Biden shared the stage with former President Barack Obama. Quotes are from the official transcript of the speech published by the American Presidency Project [1].

”John Fetterman Vetoes—”

The slip came as Biden turned to crime. “Public safety is why John got into public service in the first place,” he said. “Oz won’t do a thing about guns. But John Fetterman vetoes—but, with your votes, John Fetterman will be in the Senate and be able to help me add one more thing—what I got done when I was a Senator: ban assault weapons. Ban them! Ban them. Ban them. They have no place in America” [1].

Fetterman was Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, running for the Senate. Neither job comes with a veto pen. Biden’s own veto threat came a few lines later, aimed at a national abortion ban: “If they get enough States to do that, they get the Congress to vote for that, I will veto it” [1].

It was not the only odd moment. Biden opened by telling fans in the balcony, “Don’t jump!” When audience members held up “Free Iran” signs, he promised, “Don’t worry, we’re going to talk about Iran” [1]. The official transcript shows he never came back to it.

Obama and Biden, Together at Last

The rally was the first joint campaign appearance by Biden and Obama since Biden took office, a sign of how badly Democrats needed the open Pennsylvania Senate seat [2]. Fetterman was neck and neck with Republican Mehmet Oz, the heart surgeon and TV host, and the race could decide control of the Senate [2].

“I don’t just need you to vote. I need you to gather up your friends and family and make sure that they are also voting,” Obama told the crowd [2]. Former President Donald Trump had his own rally for Oz scheduled the same day in western Pennsylvania [3].

Biden spent much of his time talking about himself and his record. He told the crowd he had been known as “Pennsylvania’s third Senator” because Philadelphia TV covered Delaware, and he took a shot at Oz’s residency: “I lived in Pennsylvania longer than Oz has lived in Pennsylvania. And I moved away when I was 10 years old” [1].

”Cut the Federal Debt in Half”

The biggest claim of the night came on spending. “We literally cut the Federal debt in half by $1.4 trillion,” Biden said, “$1.4 trillion just this year and last year by $350 billion.” Then he went after Republicans: “I don’t want to hear from the MAGA Republicans who blew up the debt. We’re the ones bringing it down” [1].

The numbers tell a different story about the debt:

The deficit, not the debt, fell. Treasury reported that the fiscal 2022 deficit was $1.375 trillion, half of the fiscal 2021 deficit and $1.4 trillion smaller [4].
The debt kept climbing. Total public debt stood at about $27.75 trillion the day Biden took office, Jan. 20, 2021. By Nov. 4, 2022, the day before this rally, it was about $31.22 trillion [5].
Why the deficit dropped. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan budget watchdog, said the decline came “mainly because COVID relief is ending,” not from new savings. As of April 2022, it estimated Biden’s own actions had added at least $2.5 trillion to deficits through 2031 [6].

By the time Biden left office, total public debt had passed $36.2 trillion [5].

Jobs, Student Loans and Corporate Taxes

Biden ran through the rest of his pitch. “The unemployment rate is 3.7 percent, a near-record 50-year low,” he said [1]. That matched the Labor Department’s report released the day before, which showed the rate rising two-tenths of a point to 3.7% in October as employers added 261,000 jobs [7].

He bragged about his student debt plan: “Because I acted, we provided $10,000 in student debt relief and another—another—10,000 bucks if you got a Pell grant” [1]. He also attacked Republicans, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., for having pandemic loans forgiven while opposing his plan.

And he hit big business: “In 2020, 55 of the largest corporations in America made $40 billion, and they paid not one single penny in Federal tax” [1]. That figure came from a 2021 report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which found 55 large corporations paid no federal income tax on about $40.5 billion in 2020 U.S. profits [8].

By the Numbers

$1.375 trillion: the fiscal 2022 federal deficit, down $1.4 trillion from fiscal 2021 [4].
$31.22 trillion: total public debt on Nov. 4, 2022, up from $27.75 trillion when Biden was sworn in [5].
3.7%: the October 2022 unemployment rate [7].
2,751,012 to 2,487,260: Fetterman’s official margin over Oz, about 51.2% to 46.3% [10].
222 to 213: the Republican House majority that took over in January 2023 [13].

What Happened Next

Fetterman won. He beat Oz by about 264,000 votes out of roughly 5.37 million cast [10], and Oz called Fetterman to concede the morning after the election [11]. Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro won the governor’s race, and Republican Doug Mastriano conceded five days after the race was called [12].

Republicans took the House. The GOP won a 222-213 majority for the 118th Congress [13], handing House Republicans the gavels and subpoena power for the next two years.

The Supreme Court killed the student debt plan. On June 30, 2023, the justices ruled against the Biden administration in Biden v. Nebraska, reversing the lower court’s judgment in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts [9].

Fetterman broke with his party. The senator Biden called “Pennsylvania” turned into one of the Democrats most willing to work with Trump. He accepted Trump’s invitation to Mar-a-Lago, which Fox News reported would be the first known meeting there between Trump and a sitting Democratic senator. “I’m the senator for all Pennsylvanians – not just Democrats in Pennsylvania,” he told Fox News [14]. He and his wife, Gisele, talked with Trump for more than an hour, and Fetterman later called the president “kind” and “cordial” [19]. The AP described his “continuing evolution from a leading surrogate for President Joe Biden into a Trump-friendly lawmaker” [15]. He voted for the Laken Riley Act, which requires federal detention of illegal immigrants accused of crimes such as theft and burglary, when the Senate passed it 64-35 on Jan. 20, 2025 [16][17].

Oz got a new job. Trump tapped Oz to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The Senate confirmed him 53-45 on April 3, 2025, putting him in charge of coverage for about 160 million Americans [18]. Biden told the Philadelphia crowd that codifying Roe v. Wade depended on electing Fetterman “and keep[ing] control of the House” [1]. Democrats lost the House.

For another Biden trip that same fall, see his remarks in Syracuse, where he said Trump was “the first President since Herbert Hoover … to lose jobs”.